


A Beautiful Death

by tielan



Series: A Queen For Marvel Territory [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Black Jewels Fusion, F/M, Fireside conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9405326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Death sits across the campfire from Clint Barton; the question is whether he can forbear from teasing her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crazy4Orcas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazy4Orcas/gifts).



> Requested for More Joy Day

On the streets of the city, the kids would sometimes find the dead bodies of the beggars. Usually in the winter when the city guards were too busy with the Wintersol parties in the aristo parts of town to bother with the slums, and the city cleaners didn’t patrol the streets quite so keenly when the warm insides beckoned.

So Clint learned young that there was no such thing as a beautiful death.

Twenty years later, though, he’s willing to concede himself wrong. If the witch sitting across the camp from him is death, firelight flickering across her face, flame glittering in the curl of her hair, then she is indeed a beautiful one.

“So,” she says in her quiet, husky voice as the rabbit sizzles on the spit between them, “what happens tomorrow? You take me to Prince Fury and...?”

He shrugs, not lifting his gaze from the rabbit he’s trying to cook without burning. “That’s between you and Fury. But you wouldn’t have come in if you weren’t willing to negotiate.”

Clint can feel her considering gaze on his face, and he hopes the firelight conceals the heat that’s flooding his cheeks. He’s not used to a beautiful woman’s stare – or, really, any woman’s stare.

“Very sharp,” she says after a moment. “Especially for one so young.”

“I’m nearly adult,” he snaps, then realises he’s been goaded.

Her smile, sly though it is, is exquisite. “And I’ve been adult for nearly fifty years.”

Clint already knew she was one of the long-lived races – Phil and Nick had discussed it one night only a little while ago. A Black Widow witch might gain a reputation in a village or a district or a province, but across an entire Territory so long as the Hydra rampaged and ravaged? That spoke of years of experience, years of existence. And then for her to come in, young and beautiful and completely confident in herself?

_Well, you already knew you were out of your league._

The rabbit isn’t quite burning, but there’s a distinctly crusty look to the outside. He turns it over once more, just to check some of the softer parts, and then pulls it from the fire, using his beltknife to test if it’s done.

“Hope you don’t mind it a little overdone.”

“I’ve learned to eat what’s set before me.”

Her smile gleams in his mind as he divides up the meal. He hands over her portion on his tin plate and eats his off the stick spit, tossing the bones in the fire to char and crack.

They don’t talk much; what does a male say to a witch who might pass for an aristo lady, a merchant’s wife, or a game hunter as easily as she might cut his throat? He answers her questions, about his skill with the bow, about how he came to join Nick Fury, about the work they do – skirmishing around the edges of the Territory, pushing back the Hydra out of the vulnerable parts of the Territory, keeping it all together until...

“Until a Queen comes again?”

Clint tries to shrug. “Fury figures it’s only a matter of time. He says he was promised a Queen, although he won’t say by whom or when. But then, he’s a Warlord Prince.”

The other castes survive without a Queen, although Blood society is built around them, but the Warlord Princes are a law unto themselves unless a Queen holds their reins. Some of them go mad. Some of them go bad. Fury built up an army to fight the Hydra and has held it strong for thirty years, give or take a few. But there’s an edge in him that Clint’s never seen him without, but which he thinks might be the sharp end of a Warlord Prince without a Queen to serve.

He stirs the embers of the fire as they die down, then looks up at the silence. 

“He was promised true,” she murmurs, her gaze dark and unfocused. “A Queen will come.”

The hairs on the back of Clint’s neck stand up, and his hand pauses in stirring the coals. “When?”

She blinks and the pale eyes look at him. “Not tonight.”

“So we’re okay to go to bed instead of waiting up for her?” Clint manages a shrug that might even seem casual. “Fine by me.” He climbs to his feet and retrieves the bedroll he hung from an overhead branch to air while avoiding finding it full of crawlies from the forest floor. Now he shakes it out, and begins to lay it down on the cold leaf litter under their feet.

She’s gotten up and is unwinding her cloak from a nearby tree. And Clint isn’t about to question whether she’ll be warm enough, because she’s been doing this longer than he’s been alive, but a cloak isn’t much and...

“It’s a pretty cold night,” he says ingenuously. “We should share the bedroll. For warmth.”

There’s a moment when she looks at him and Clint can’t breathe. He’s dead. He’s absolutely dead. There’s no way she’ll let him live after the insolence of an invitation like that–

And then she smiles. “Such courtesy.” Irony drips from her voice before it softens, laughing. “But no, thank you. When you’re older, maybe.”

Clint shrugs and settles down in his bedroll, smiling.

It would have been a beautiful death, but he’s just as glad that it’s not.  


 


End file.
